%T Programming the CELL\-BE using CSP
%A  Kenneth Skovhede,  Morten N. Larsen,  Brian Vinter
%E Peter H. Welch,  Adam T. Sampson,  Jan Bækgaard Pedersen,  Jon Kerridge,  Jan F. Broenink,  Frederick R. M. Barnes
%B Communicating Process Architectures 2011
%X The current trend in processor design seems to focus on
   using multiple
cores, similar to a cluster\-on\-a\-chip
   model. These processors are
generally fast and power
   efficient, but due to their highly parallel
nature, they are
   notoriously difficult to program for most scientists.
One
   such processor is the CELL broadband engine (CELL\-BE) which
   is known
for its high performance, but also for a complex
   programming model which
makes it difficult to exploit the
   architecture to its full potential. To
address this
   difficulty, this paper proposes to change the
   programming
model to use the principles of CSP design, thus
   making it simpler to
program the CELL\-BE and avoid
   livelocks, deadlocks and race conditions.
The CSP model
   described here comprises a thread library for
   the
synergistic processing elements (SPEs) and a simple
   channel based
communication interface. To examine the
   scalability of the
implementation, experiments are performed
   with both scientific
computational cores and synthetic
   workloads. The implemented CSP model
has a simple API and is
   shown to scale well for problems with
significant
   computational requirements.